In the ever-expanding landscape of programming languages, complete with compilers, runtime environments, and virtual machines, there’s a somewhat lighthearted yet fully functional counterbalance: ultra-minimal language implementations. Two well-known examples of these are Sectorforth and Sectorlisp, each designed to fit within a mere 512 bytes of a boot sector. However, these are dwarfed by the recently unveiled Milliforth project, which weighs in at just 380 bytes.
As per its description, Milliforth claims to be the smallest programming language ever created that can be used in real-world scenarios, as opposed to esoteric languages like Brainfuck, which have even smaller implementations. The fundamental concept behind Milliforth is that Forth and Lisp languages are capable of autonomously expanding a minimal system through a program, enabling the bootstrapping of complex functionality.
Numerous Optimizations and Omissions
To achieve its minuscule size, Milliforth relies on the ancient 16-bit x86 architecture commands, akin to Sectorc. The project employs only a handful of keywords for memory addressing, stack pointers, numeric summation, NAND instructions, and a few others. It’s mentioned that while Milliforth is heavily inspired by Sectorforth, it introduces additional optimizations and modifications. For instance, the state of a program is stored in a single struct.
However, the omission of certain components means that the interpreter can hang in the event of errors, and error handling is quite sparse. In this regard, it is noted, “In case of input errors, an additional blank line is printed between the previous input and the next input prompt.” Consequently, detailed error information is lacking.
For those interested in experimenting with Milliforth, the source code is readily available, along with a binary version that can be executed in tools like Qemu. Additionally, a Hello-World program implemented in Forth is included, which can be run directly.
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